THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



CONDUCTED BY ISAAC HILL. 



•' Those who labor in the earth arc the chosen people qf God, whose breasts he hasmade hhpemliar depositefor aubstanlial and genuine virtue."— 1 



EFFEBSON. 



VOLUME III. 



CONCORD, N. H. FEB. 27, 1841. 



NUMBER 2. 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



A MONTHLY NEWSrAPER , IS PUBLISHED BY 



JOHN M. HILL, 



mirs Brick Block, Concord, .V. H. 



generaTageivts, 



B. COOKE, Keene, N. H. 



TH. R. HAMPTON, Washington CUy; D. C. 



JOHN MARSH, Washington St. Boston. 



CHARLES WARREN, Brinley Row, Worcester, Mass. 



A. H. STILLWELL, No. 1, Market Square, Prov. R.l. 



GEORGE W. TOWLE, Portsmouth, N. H. 



L. W. HALL & Co. Springfield, Mass. 



The Visitor will be issued on the last day of each month. 



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Conversations on Agriculture. 



THE GRASSES. IMPROVEME.NT OF FARM STOCK. 



The practice and experience of intelligent 

 farmers are of far greater value to the commu- 

 nity than the plausible theories of scientific exper- 

 imentalists. The man of mere book knowledge 

 may never expect to stand alongside of the prac- 

 tical man until he shall add to his knowledge, 

 experience. Rare is that talent which can do a 

 complicated business wkU, upon being merely 

 told how it is done : we want to see others do it, 

 we need parliciiiate in doing it often more than 

 once, before we can be (jualified to perform the 

 work ourselves. 



Would a man gain valuable information in the 

 affairs of life, he will consult with ])ructical men. 

 The Massachusetts Legi.slattnf i.s ((imposed of 

 majority of farmers, many of ulumi are among 

 the most practical and intelligent of that agricul- 

 tural Commonwealth. Dnring the long sessions 

 of the winter, meetings have been held at the 

 Representatives' Hall in the Boston State-House, 

 one evening in each week, for the discussion 

 subjects pertaining to Agriculture. It has be 

 among the piivileges which the Editor of the 

 Monthly Visitor enjoys while resident at Boston 

 to attend two of the first four of these meetings 

 which have been held during the present winter. 

 We intend from time to time to take down sketch- 

 es of the matters discussed, and to present them 

 through the medium of this paper. 



SECOND MEETING. 



Thursday evening, Jan. 21. Hon. D. P. King, 

 President of the Senate, in the Chair. 



The subjecit for discussion, Cultivation of the 

 Grasses. 



Mr. CoLMAN (Agricultural Conunissioner for 

 the State of Massachusetts) said the number of 

 known grasses was about six hundred. With 

 the nature and properties of all these it would 

 not be expected any one man would be acquaint- 

 ed : he would notice a few, such as are most fa- 

 miliar, and best known in New England — these 

 are Herdsgrass, Clover, Redtop, Orchard Grass, 

 Twitch Grass, Lucerne, Millet, Sanlbin, Fowl 

 Meadow. 



The Herdsgrass, by some denominated Timo- 

 thy, he considered the most profitable and most 

 useful grass that had ever been cidtivated in this 

 country. As great a cro]) of herdsgrass at a sin- 

 gle cutting, as he had ever known, was raised by 

 John Wells, Es(|., of Dorchester ; and tliis was 

 four tons of dry hav to ibe aero. A not unconi 



inon large crop on land highly cultivated, was 

 three tons; but two tons to the acre might be 

 considered a good crop. With top-dressing once 

 or twice, herdsgrass will continue six or seven 

 years. 



[We have a handsome plat of almost pure 

 herdsgrass on the Concord intervale, which last 

 year produced at the rate of fidl two tons to the 

 where the grass seed was last sowed twelve 

 years ago : there has been no top-dressing upon 

 it all that time, but we believe the river freshets 

 y have overflowed it as many as three times. 

 This ground, when it came into our possession, 

 more than twenty years ago, was what we then 

 considered exhausted intervale — it had been al- 

 ternately broken up from the sward, cultivated 

 with but little dressing, and again lai(i down un- 

 irtue of the upper soil was pretty much 

 exhausted. At that period, the editor had but 

 little leisure to attend to the few acres of land 

 which had fallen into his possession — he made 

 mantire only from keeping a horse and a cow, 

 and this he usually disposed of on a single acre. 

 It came at length time to break up the ground, and 

 having engaged a heavy team of three yokes of 

 oxen, from some notion of deep ploughing, he 

 took it in his head to direct that this land should 

 be turned up to the depth of ten inches, being at 

 least four inches below where any former plough 

 had touched. The plough brought up yellow 

 soil in some places, and clay bearing the appear- 

 ance of marl in others ; and the ploughman who 

 owned and directed the team, stated his 

 be that we should ruin our land. The deep 

 ploughing was intended for the land where there 

 was a pan — it would not do, as he l)e!ieved, wl: 

 there was no pan to turn over and cover "so deep 

 the upper soil. With manure not to exceed ten 

 ox-cart loads to the acre, each year, this land was 

 planted two years with corn and potatoes. The 

 crop of these two years, as might be supposed, 

 was not extraordinary ; but as an effect of the 

 deep ploughing, we observed in passing over it, 

 that our feet siuik into the ground as into a dry 

 ash heai>. The next year, the land was put down 

 by a crop of oats to herdsgrass and clover. Hav- 

 irig before almost lost our crop of oats by too 

 much weiiiht of straw from tliick sovving, we 

 directed that only a bushel and a half of seed 

 should be sowed upon the piece. They grew 

 large, and all stood straight until the time of har- 

 vest. The yield on the piece measured ninety- 

 three bushels of clean oats, counted and marked 

 by us as they were put away in bags. It was the 

 brtunate and largest crop of any kind ever 

 produced on our premises. Tlie first year the 

 ip of hav upon the groimd was almost exclu- 

 ely clover; anxl from that day to this the 

 ground has annually yielded between two and 

 three tons of excellent herdsgrass to the acre- 

 worth at least thirty dollars in this market, if it 

 had been sold, and" which has been cut, cured, 

 and housed at an expense not exceeding five 

 dollars each year. For tliis land we originally 

 paid fifty-six dollais the acre : the average profit, 

 after paying for the labor and taxes upon it, has 

 been for the last ten years, each year, twenty- 

 four dollars to the acre, being more than four 

 times the original cost of the land. The over- 

 flow of the river has undoubtedly had a good 

 effect upon the ground ; but we feel confident 

 the great impulse was given by turning and 

 bringing to the surface an entire new sod, in the 

 deep ploughing. We have thus far digressed, and 

 taken the matter of herdsgrass out of the moutl 

 of our friend Cohiwi).— Ed. F. M. Visitor.] 



Mr. Colman continued : Herdsgrass occupied t 

 high rank among the grassed in Great Britain 

 its praise had been proclaimed by that noble 

 farmer, the Duke of Bedford. But the cattle 

 were the best judges ; and horses and horned 

 cattle preferred herdsgrass to every other kind 

 in its green state. Mr. C. was himself of opinion 

 that this grass ought never to be cut until it was 



fully ripe — the nutritive matter of the hay he 

 considered twenty-live per cent belter when fully 

 matured, than when cut in a green state. 



There were different opinions as to the quan- 

 tity of herdsgrass seed which should be sown 

 to an acre. Some persons sowed not more than 

 six or eight quarts : others who have increased 

 upon that quantity have found themselves well 

 paid. Mr. Wells says he would sow at least half 

 a bushel to the acre. It is desirable, on account 

 of the first crop succeeding that of laying down, 

 that clover should go along with the herdsgrass. 

 Herdsgrass succeeds best on moist, and not on 

 wet soil. 



Of the kinds of clover, Mr. Colman men- 

 tioned the white clover as natural to the soil of 

 New England, growing spontaneously in our 

 pastures ; the red Dutch clover, the northern and 

 the southern clover. He had himself cultivated 

 the French clover, which yields most abundantly, 

 but which must be sown every season, as it was 

 only of annual growth. Clover is prelerred as a 

 grass because it loosens the soil and ameliorates 

 the condition of the land. It has a long tap root 

 —has a broad leaf, and for this reason stands the 

 drought better than other grasses. Much of the 

 rank clover hay, as it is usually iranaged, is of 

 little value. Cut down not until it is too ripe, 

 its leaves fall off", and the body of the hay is like 

 brush. Mr. Wellington, of Medford, makes his 

 clover in the cock, letting it lie several days with- 

 out spreading. The same method Mr. C. observed 

 was practised by a distinguished farmer of his 

 acquaintance in Syracuse, N. Y. Mr. Colman 

 said he preferred the early June clover to the 

 Southern clover, although the latter gave the 

 greatest crop. The best method was to sow 

 clover upon the snow in the spring— if it was 

 sowed the previous fall it was more apt to be 

 killed out. 



It was the practice of some farmers to sow 

 clover afler the fall sowing of rye or wheat, and 

 to keep up the cultivation by ploughing in the 

 clover after the grain crop was taken ofl^, and 

 sow for a new crop of grain. It had become a 

 question with him whether it were not better for 

 renovating land to turn in a dry than a green 

 crop. Two farmers had given it as their opinion 

 that the dry was the crop of clover to be turned 

 under: one of them exhibited a field in which 

 the trial liad been made both ways ; and the dry 

 crop showed the better state of the land. Large 

 crops of clover had been produced in this coun- 

 try — four and five tons to the acre. He had 

 heard of eight tons of dry clover hay being pro- 

 duced upon an acre in Ireland ; but it should be 

 observed that the Irish acre was somewhat larger 

 than ours. From four to six pounds of clover 

 seed was generally sowed npon an acre. The 

 farmers of Essex county, Massachusetts, almost 

 universally sow clover with herdsgrass as a sub- 

 stitute for the first year. Green clover was some- 

 times injurious when fed to horses, producing a 

 too abundant saliva. 



Redtop, Mr. C. observed, is indigenoiis to this 

 country : there are several kinds, bearing a re- 

 semblance to each other— the common kind dif- 

 fered from the same species of a lighter color, 

 and from another kind called the Rhode Island 

 grass ; the latter has branches much more nu- 

 merous, and the crop is much heavier— six tons 

 of hay of the R. L redtop have been said to be 

 obtained from an acre. The common redtop is 

 a good hay for horses, and good for oxen and 

 cows. It grows upon almost every kind of soil 

 saving very wet, which it avoids. 



Mr. C. noticed a grass upon the Deerfield mea- 

 dows, near Connecticiil river, called the English 

 bent, which came in and took root immediately 

 after an overflow : it grows tall and large, and 

 was eaten bv the cattle with avidity. 



Orchard ['rass, Mr. C. said, had been made a 

 subject of particular attention by Mr. Prince, ot 

 Roxburv. He also had cultivated it himself, and 



